Maurice Byrd’s memory is vivid as he recounts the clash with a drunken, irate neighbor that led him to shoot the man last June. It was the culmination of several years of hostility: Byrd, who is Black, said he regularly endured racial slurs from Stephen Strassburg, who was white. But that day, as a 911 system recorded the latest verbal assault, Byrd said Strassburg also threw a flurry of punches and grabbed Byrd by his shirt.
Byrd, 42, thought he was acting in self-defense when he drew his licensed handgun and shot Strassburg in the parking lot next to the shop Byrd owned in Hatboro, Pennsylvania, a bedroom suburb of Philadelphia.
The barber and U.S. Army veteran called 911 as the deadly fight broke out, and throughout the incident, he stayed on the line with the police operator. When officers arrived, Byrd pointed them to his gun, which he’d placed on the ground next to his driver’s license, military ID, and gun carry permit. After he was handcuffed and driven to a police station, Byrd continued to cooperate without an attorney present, and said he gave police a full accounting of what happened.
That statement, he would later learn, led authorities to charge him with first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life-without-parole sentence in Pennsylvania. But after spending nearly 10 months in jail awaiting trial, Byrd and his attorneys believe it was also that statement that led a jury to find him not guilty of murder and all related counts in late March.
“I quietly thanked God. That was the calmest not guilty verdict ever,” Byrd told The Trace during an interview in the court building where he was tried. He kept his emotions in check, he said, but inside, he was brimming with hope. He added, “It was a feeling of justice, like justice actually worked.”
Byrd’s victory places him among the small percentage of Black defendants who have been found not guilty for shooting white people in the name of self-defense, according to Urban Institute researchers who study racial bias in the criminal justice system. Experts, though, say the case is unlikely to set a precedent, since Byrd likely prevailed because of the facts specific to his case, and possibly because he was overcharged.
With his acquittal, Byrd managed to buck the norm, his lawyers said, because trial evidence, including the statement and surveillance footage, showed that he acted within the law. “We reviewed the discovery and we agreed with him, he was innocent,” said Scott Frame, one of two public defenders who represented Byrd. “We decided that the best strategy at trial was to just tell his story.”
‘Do not let him get the weapon’
Maurice Byrd was born and raised in Philadelphia. The self-described gun enthusiast enjoys visiting shooting ranges and gun shows. In 2008, after completing a seven-year stint in the Army that took him to four continents and nine countries, he was honorably discharged because of a leg injury. He then got a permit to carry a gun, earned an MBA, and opened his barbershop, which he moved to Hatboro last year.
“I support gun-violence reform 100 percent, but I believe you should be entitled to protect yourself with whatever item you need at that moment,” he said. “We have a Second Amendment for a reason.”
Byrd’s recounting of what happened on June 8, 2024 sheds new light on why he shot his neighbor. Early that evening, he recalled, he stepped out of the back door of his shop to smoke a cigarette before his next client was scheduled to arrive.
Strassburg, who lived in an apartment above the shop, soon started insulting Byrd, calling him a “dirty n-word” and drug dealer who did not belong in the neighborhood, Byrd said. Two neighbors who witnessed the incident gave police statements corroborating Byrd’s account that Strassburg used the racial slur and was the aggressor. This behavior, according to Byrd and several neighbors, wasn’t new; in fact, Strassburg’s aggression had led Byrd to call the police five times since 2022. Strassburg had also had run-ins with the law; he once pleaded guilty to a vehicular homicide charge that stemmed from a DUI conviction.
After Strassburg came by on June 8, Byrd said he went inside his barbershop to call the police, but he said Strassburg opened the door and continued to taunt him. Moments later, after he believed that Strassburg had left, Byrd said he went back to the parking lot, where Strassburg darted around the corner of the building and ran toward him. “I start backing up from him because he is charging me pretty seriously,” he said. “He’s chasing me, I’m backing up.”
Strassburg continued threatening him and swung at him, Byrd said, and then grabbed his shirt. “That’s when I began to draw my weapon, pointing it down, never aimed it at him. Then, he looked at it,” Byrd said. “Now, I’m hoping he was going to be deterred from this … I’m like, ‘Stop, stop.’ Then, he goes, ‘What are you going to do, you gonna shoot me, N-word?’”
Then, Byrd said, Strassburg lunged for the gun. “I was like, ‘Oh, gosh, come on man!’ Then the three punches. I was getting hit and my only thought was, ‘Do not let him get the weapon.’ I put my body between him and the weapon and I was thinking, don’t let him get it,” Byrd said.
The last thing Byrd remembers: After he started running, Strassburg caught up to him, and there was a struggle. “He was reaching for the gun, his watch came off, his chain got broken — and the weapon went off,” Byrd said.
Strassburg was mortally wounded from gunshots to the neck and back, three days shy of his 38th birthday. He had a daughter and was engaged to be married.
“Stephen was a protector, a provider, and a passionate person,” his family said in an online obituary. “The love he gave was unmatched. He truly was too good for this world.” Attempts to reach Strassburg’s relatives were not successful.
A rare ruling
Byrd’s case rocked Hatboro, a tranquil community of 8,200 about 20 miles north of Philadelphia. It also raised questions for residents and prosecutors alike, including where is the line between self-defense and homicide when deadly force is used?
In the nation’s criminal justice system, data shows that Black people who assert self-defense as a justification for committing violence are less successful at getting acquitted than white people.
Studies by the Urban Institute, the Duke Center for Firearms Law, and the American Bar Association, among others, have examined how racial disparities in self-defense cases have grown as more states adopted “stand your ground” laws. Pennsylvania is one of more than 30 states with such laws, which allow people to use deadly force to protect themselves and others, in many cases eliminating the obligation to retreat before firing.
Some researchers contend that racial disparities in the criminal justice system can be traced to the implicit bias that leads some law enforcement officials and jurors to believe that Black people are more dangerous and likely guilty.
Between 2005 and 2010, there were 1,210 homicides with a Black shooter and a white victim, and just 17 of them, slightly more than 1 percent, were ruled justified, Urban Institute researchers found. For the 2,069 homicides where the shooter was white and the victim Black, 236 — or 11.4 percent — were ruled justified.
Byrd’s verdict, delivered at the end of a four-day trial, cut across these statistics. It also validated some legal veterans’ initial concerns that the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office had overcharged Byrd. They noted that the circumstances were not typical of first-degree murder cases because Strassburg physically assaulted Byrd just before the shooting, Byrd had a gun permit, he called police before firing, and stayed at the scene until officers arrived.
“If self-defense is a gray area in a case, it may be reasonable to bring some criminal charges,” Temple University Law School Professor Jules Epstein said in response to the verdict. “But calling it first-degree murder? Putting a person at risk of life in jail? Making it harder to get bail? All of those seem to be wrong decisions.”
“This is a perfect example of the district attorney really overreaching and losing a chance of getting a conviction on one of the less serious charges,” retired Philadelphia Judge Benjamin Lerner said. “So, it seems like justice was done.”
From 1996 to 2019, Lerner presided over the Homicide Trial Division of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. “To win the whole thing, to get all 12 jurors to say, this guy didn’t commit any crime at all, to me, it certainly calls into question the decision to proceed to try to convict this person of everything up to and including first-degree murder.”
The Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the verdict, or on its reasoning behind the charge. During the trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse, Assistant District Attorney Samantha Cauffman told the jury Byrd was looking for a fight, and that he could have avoided shooting Strassburg if he’d waited inside for the police.
“While we respect the jury’s verdict in this case, we stand by our evidence and remain committed to seeking justice and upholding our duty to our community with fairness and diligence,” the office said in a statement.
“It gave his side of the story”
From the moment Byrd’s legal defense team took the case, his attorneys believed that what he did was a matter of self-defense, Frame said.
Frame and his co-counsel, Joseph Schultz, argued that Byrd’s actions were protected not only by the state’s traditional self-defense law but also by its Castle Doctrine, which allows for the use of deadly force in self-defense in the home, workplace, or anywhere a person has a right to be. In 2011, that statute was expanded by the state’s “stand your ground” provision, which eliminated the duty to retreat when defending oneself away from home. In a public setting, a person has a duty to retreat before using force.
Prosecutors entered the statement Byrd gave authorities right after the shooting as evidence, as only they could under state law.
“When they played the statement, it was a sigh of relief, because we wanted that in. We knew that was important evidence,” Frame said. “It gave his side of the story.”
Frame said he thought Byrd’s statement did such a good job explaining his actions that the team decided not to put him on the witness stand. That choice, he added, avoided giving prosecutors the opportunity to try to trip him up during cross-examination.
Another key piece of evidence was the surveillance video, which showed that Strassburg “was the initial aggressor,” Schultz said. “If it had not been for that video, this probably would have come out a whole different way.”
Kriston Jae Bethel for The Trace
Byrd and his attorneys said that, while they believe the evidence made clear that Strassburg’s actions toward Byrd were racially motivated, Byrd did not shoot him over slurs. “This is more than just the n-word, this is more than just emotions, it’s more than just an assault,” Byrd said. “This was a fight to keep him from getting my gun.”
“You have Maurice who is a combat veteran and knows how to protect himself, who has been trained to only use his weapon when he is in a position of danger, and you have multiple calls to the police,” Frame said.
Shortly after gaining his freedom, Byrd said he’s not sure what’s next, but he’s decided to keep his barbershop closed. There’s too much tension in the community to go back, he reasoned. He’s still wading through the stack of mail and paperwork that accumulated while he was behind bars. He’s set up a GoFundMe page to help him pay expenses until he finds employment.
Every day, he said, he thinks about the shooting that ended someone’s life and altered his own. “This is an awful situation. I wish it didn’t happen. It was out of my control,” he said. “I feel horrible for his family. There’s nothing I can do now but feel horrible.”
The Trace’s reporting in Philadelphia is a part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The William Penn Foundation provides lead support for Every Voice, Every Vote in 2024 and 2025 with additional funding from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Comcast NBC Universal, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation, Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation, and Philadelphia Health Partnership. To learn more about the project and view a full list of supporters, visit www.everyvoice-everyvote.org. Editorial content is created independently of the project’s donors.
